I am Nyarlathotep

Or at least this quiz says so. What about you?

Oh, and Happy New Year! I daresay 2009 shall be filled with lots of Cthulhu-style goodness.

Happy Holidays!

I'm taking a quick break from RPG posts for a holiday post. Forgive me.
Okay, in the spirit of the season, here are my top 10 favorite Christmas songs:

Bonus Track! 11. Happy X-Mas (War is Over)
In this song, John Lennon begs the world for peace … a valuable sentiment, in any season.

10. All I Want for Christmas is You
Ye gods, a Mariah song I like! It’s true. It’s rather cutsie, but I like it.

9. Please Come Home for Christmas
A blues standard. There’s actually a surprising amount of X-mas blues tunes out there, but this tops my list. The Eagles gave it a good effort, and Jon Bon Jovi does a shockingly good cover of this, but for the real McCoy get your hands on the Charles Brown (no, the blues singer) version.

8. Santa Baby
Eartha Kitt first sung and recording this in 1953, and she said it was a favorite song of hers. Smoky, bluesy, with a touch of sultry greed … this one charms with its bald-faced honesty.

7. Holly Jolly Christmas
Johnny Marks wrote a number of good Christmas songs, this among them. Burl Ives wasn’t the first to record it, but his happy voice is probably the first folks think of when this song is mentioned.

6. Let it Snow
A great love song that never bothers to mention Christmas, this tune has been covered at least 30 times to my count. Great stuff.

5. Christmas Wrapping
In 1981 the New Wave band The Waitresses spun a great tale of love lost, and found, and lost, and found… Charming, humorous, and something that touches a common chord.

4. What Child is This?
My favorite version of this lovely song is the Vanessa Williams version, well sung and passionately rendered.

3. White Christmas
The film Holiday Inn made this Irving Berlin tune immortal, and with good reason—no one does it like Bing Crosby.

2. The Christmas Song
This wonderful tune was written by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells during a particularly hot streatcch of summer, when Wells jotted some wintery-sounding thoughts on paper to cool off (mentally at least). Nat King Cole recorded several versions, beginning in 1946. Others have made covers of the song, but to me Nat's buttery voice invokes hot rum cider sipped before a warm fire.

1. Jingle Bell Rock
A fast, spirited song that, to me, sums up everything cool about holiday music. It gets me in a good mood every time I hear it for the first time in the season, without fail. That’s enough to earn it first place!

There are many, many more songs I could have mentioned, but this list is good enough for this year!

Get the lyrics and hear many of the songs mentioned here.

I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and the very best going into 2009!

Last Chance

Goodman Games will stop selling 3.5e products on December 31st. This is the last call.

I suggest folks grab these excellent modules and products while the going is good (and at super-low prices to boot)—don't say I didn't warn you while there was still time.

Visit the Goodman Games online store here, where you can purchase all 3.5 product at 50% off.

For the rest of this December, you can also visit their PDF store here to purchase 3.5 PDF e-books at $2.

This is an ideal time to grab some Dungeon Crawl Classics. Some personal favorites:

• Dungeon Crawl Classics #5: Aerie of the Crow God
  (Andrew Hind)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #7: The Secret of Smuggler's Cove
  (Chris Doyle)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #17: Legacy of the Savage Kings
  (Harley Stroh)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #36: Talons of the Horned King
  (Michael Ferguson)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #44: Dreaming Caverns of the Duergar
  (Michael Ferguson)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock
  (Chris Doyle and Adrian Pommier with Harley Stroh and Jeff LaSala)

And hey, don't forget to pick up something written by yours truly while you're at it (wink-wink-say no more).

Get 'em while they're hot. Remember, after December 31st, they're gone forever!

Bright Torchlight, Big City

As has been (very kindly I might add) touted on the websites of Mike Ferguson & Ken Hart, Dungeon Crawl Classics #60 Thrones of Punjar is coming to a store near you in the near future. A late Christmas present if you will. I'm pretty psyched, as this is my first full-length adventure since The Scaly God (which holds a dear place in my heart but feels pretty ancient to me now). I appreciate having the opportunity to hurl another adventure at the masses—this time 4th Edition! I love the cover work of Eric Lofgren too.


City Adventures used to scare the hell out of me. The idea of running a campaign in the big city—be it Greyhawk, Waterdeep, etc.—was pretty terrifying. I prefer straight corridors and known quantities (a la The Tomb of Horrors, natch) as opposed to wide open spaces where the PCs may run amuck. As a DM, you gotta be able to think on your feet with even the best written/created city adventure.

This said, the best regular campaign I ever ran took place in a small city, specifically Fax on the Greyhawk's Wild Coast. We met for play every 2 weeks like clockwork, which gave the campaign the ease of time (something I desperately lack these days) and NPCs actually had time to develop. The PCs were befriended by a trio of shadowy yet good NPCS: Lasturne, grey elf owner of a mysterious curio shop (think of the Friday the 13th TV series and mentally you're heading in the right direction), Sharill, thief-in-training and member of the local guild, and Darksot, reformed thief with a hidden past. Added to the mix was Mentorian, wizard at large, and the guard captain Duncan. On the darker side was guardsman Ceril (a wererat that betrayed the party eventually and earned their wrath), the "evil cleric" Selyular (the bag guy who always seemed to get away), and Darnek, a bandit underling of the dreaded Silver Dagger cult that eventually joined the PCs for a time until meeting his end at the business-end of a ballista bolt. Rounding out things were an endless supply of haggling merchants, jovial bartenders, and local pickpockets.

If reading the above NPC descriptions makes things sound fluid, they were. The city environment allowed the PCs to run into the same NPCs again and again, there to bargain with them, trick them, and even at times woo them for favors. The NPCs followed their own agendas and slowly gained levels when the PCs weren't around. Good guys turned to evil, and at least one bad guy turned to good. Nothing was black and white.

I soon came to love the city forrmat, because it allowed a depth of play unmatched elsewhere. The players began to "write their own adventures" simply by what they wished their PCs to do. Want to visit Mentorian for wizardly training? There was a little "errand" to run first ... oh, and never mind that bitter ex-apprentice that thirsts for revenge. Want to join the thieves guild? Prove your worth via a bit of daring burglary in the high quarter and they'll allow you to run their trap-filled maze and qualify for membership. I planted adventure seeds everywhere I could, layered subplots over subplots, and let the dice roll where they may. (I'm still sad they never discovered that dimensional portal called the Dragongate hidden in the curio shop.) My players were charitable when needed—they endured a lot of names made up on the spot (they joked me that names starting with a D were spur-of-moment names, which they usually were)—but they seemed to love it. It was a great campaign that went on for nearly three years.

I can't speak much about Thrones at this point, except to say that my intent was to capture a bit of that "adventure seeds" concept, while also making a big city like Punjar feel dark, dirty, and almost claustrophobic. I wanted to provide both safe havens and dangerous places that the PCs might wish to give more than one visit. Did I succeed? Time will tell. But the adventure was terribly fun to write and soon took a life of its own, which is always a good sign. Here's to the city!

A Halloween Treat

Whew, what a crazy October it was! If it seems like it's been a while since my last post (or longer than usual anyway), you're not imagining things. Several writing projects keep me busy, but a greater event has occurred ... the birth of my son!

Kai Desmond Ralph Maffei arrived at approx. 1:27 pm Halloween day, after a long labor stretch by his Mom. (Honorary medal of fortitude goes to my wife, as always!)


We are delighted with our new arrival, and he brings us much joy. Life this last week has been crazy (he came home from the hospital a week ago today) and we haven't gotten a whole lot of sleep*, but it's all good. Saturday I added to our burgeoning debt by purchasing a new Macbook laptop so I can work in the livingroom while "doing the night-shift" (watching the rascal while my wife gets some sleep). It's a new chapter in our lives. A good one.

*I made the mistake of thinking that since I'm usually up till 2 am working or watching bad horror movies, the lack of sleep wouldn't be an issue (I normally average 4 hrs of sleep per night). Well, as Ken can probably attest, watching a newborn in the wee hours ain't the same as watching cable tv!

Mad Mazing

I’ve been a computer geek from the beginning. By 5th grade I was screwing around with BASIC on computers that displayed eye-blinding green type (or sometimes orange) on tiny screens. I remember getting a TRS-80 color computer one Christmas and being thrilled—this baby ran programs off cassettes—yeah, audio cassettes!—and I upgraded it from 8k to 32k. That’s RAM. Not megabytes, but 32k!

Back in the early 1980s (probably 1983 or 1984) my family was selected as a test family for a service called Videotext. We were a perfect test family, I suppose: two boys and a girl, two parents, two grandparents, all in one house. For about 6 months we got the service free and we answered some questions and did survey interviews about it. We were told that about 200 families in New Jersey had the system.

Videotext was like a primitive Internet, for its day. We could send simple notes (pre- e-mail) to other users, get weather and news, and submit letters to online advice columns. Aside from checking the weather and news, which I did every day, there wasn’t a whole lot to do on the system … until Madmaze came along.

Madmaze was a 3-D style maze game. You navigated a graphic maze, and every so often you came to a drawn location, such as a castle, that had an associated riddle. If you answered the riddle, you continued. The only riddle I remember is: “Name a Rodgers and Hammerstein play named after a state” (Oklahoma). My brother and I became addicted. Before long, we—via our screennames—were listed in the Top 10 players. We soon we moving through the maze so fast that we began running into unfinished sections, and we were invited via “e-mail” to help debug the game by provided reports of bugs and unfinished areas. Every evening at 7-o-clock I sat down and ran the gauntlet for about an hour. This was way before Wolfenstein 3D and the Atari system had only been out a few years; this was new, exciting stuff.

Eventually the test period of Videotext was growing to a close. My brother and I, enjoying the personal competition, strove to finish the maze before each other … and anyone else. The last week was a mad dash to the finish, as the hallways of the maze grew steadily weirder (they had begun as brick or clay and now had glowing electrodes in them). Then it was over. My brother finished first, another player called ElBandito finished second, and I finished third—mere points apart. Curse you ElBandito!

As his prize for coming in first, my brother won a poster-sized print of the screen location of his choice, signed by the digital artist. My brother, knowing I knew the locations better and wanting to share his prize, let me choose. It was easy; after briefly considering the Haunted House I chose the Castle (big surprise, eh?). We indeed received our print (which sadly is now long gone) and it adorned our bedroom wall for a time. Soon thereafter the system was removed from our house and we heard little more about it, though it seems the test helped lay the groundwork for the Prodigy online system.

Historical notes: Internet searches lead me to believe that Videotex (no t) was the name of our service, but I remember it being Videotext, dammit! Greg Costikyan (designer of the West End Games’ Paranoid RPG, among other things) developed a Madmaze game for Prodigy in 1989, but this is not the game we played. Some screenshots of this latter game are labeled Madmaze II, so I have to assume that we played an earlier or prototype version (call it Madmaze I or perhaps Zero).

So what’s the moral here? Not much, except to share memories of my first online dungeon. Later adventures in the computer realm would follow: Ultima III and IV, Wolfenstein, etc., but few captured that excitement of exploring Madmaze.

Back from the Con

I wanted to post this earlier, but alas, life has been busy! This month has found me happily writing the hours away, and both my personal and professional lives have gotten busier with various things—including a baby on the way!

A week before the Con, the same day I launched a new 4e campaign (more of an experiment I hope to expand with more players later), I took a bad fall and ended up badly tearing the ligaments in my foot (and possibly breaking bones as well, possible MRI to come). My foot promptly changed all shades of blue, and my orthopedic surgeon happily pronounced it the worst sprain he had seen in recent memory. I ditched the crutches a day before flying out, but still needed a cane for support (oh the humanity).

Our flight to Indy was Turbulence City and twice the plane dropped and shook -- after the second drop I turned to face my now dead-awake seat-mate who stared at me plate-eyed and said, "That was disconcerting!" So much for good beginnings! (They say bad things come in threes, and last week a neighbor backed out of her driveway right into my car. Crash. The car of course wouldn't have been there except I can't currently drive because of my foot ... sigh. So I figure foot–flight–crash makes three!)

The Con was hectic but fun. The Goodman Games/Troll Lords party was a hoot, replete with old RPG war stories told by veterans. I finally had the pleasure to meet the unique energy avatar that is Harley Stroh, and I totally failed my Fortitude save versus his infamous bear hug. The Slippery Noodle was my kind of place, replete with blues music (I jocked my own blues show for 5 years on public radio).

Friday night we stormed the ENnies, our toasting glasses filled with Whiterock soda at the ready. I was disappointed (to put it mildly) that we didn't get the gold, as I feel our entries were all incredibly deserving. Such is life. Castle Whiterock did take Silver for cartography (congrats Jeremy!) and that's no mean feat. Next year is ours, just wait...

Highlights of this trip included working the Goodman Games booth, which is one of the few times I actually have the pleasure of interacting with our customers. The Con also puts me into contact with some folks I don't get to see all that often, as well as my GG East regulars Ken Hart and Adrian Pommier. (Top marks to Blackdirge for still managing to stoke my interest in swordfighting mere minutes after hearing my broken thumb story. And no, I'm not dueling you next year, dude!) Amy & I spent part of an afternoon over at the Indiana Museum and got to see the Jack Kerouac scroll, which was very cool.

Friday I also got some shopping in, of course. My acquisitions included:

• All the Goodman Games 4e modules


• Dice I really don’t need


• D&D figures I really don’t need


• Some neat mini terrain pieces and crates made from used tires


• Delta Green: Eyes Only (Chaosium)


• Dragon magazines # 296, 297, & 298


• FR2: Moonshae by Douglas Niles (TSR)


• X8: Drums on Fire Mountain (TSR)


• The latest issue of Kobold Quarterly


• A dice bag decorated with a bow-wielding nymph


• F3: Crystal Skull (Necromancer)


• Some Cthulhu car stickers

Saturday night was the GG seminar "How to Write Adventures That Don't Suck" and it was a blast. Our esteemed panel included Joseph Goodman, Harley Stroh, Ken Hart, Jeff LaSala, Brendan LaSalle, Adrian Pommier, and Luke Johnson, talented folks all. We had a friendly, intelligent crowd and there were some good questions. As usual, I was shy until I opened my mouth, but the front row stayed awake and I got the sense the seminar was well received.

Sunday I walked a couple blocks down to catch the GG tournament-in-progress, to see if my Round Three creations were proving suitably deadly. Later I got to the GG booth just as the last of the trophies were being handed out (at this point my foot was pretty much shot, and my Speed was down to a 2-square rating). Congrats to the victors, the Blood Kings!

It was a good time. I talked with good people, was reminded that I work with an incredible group of guys and gals, and I held to my promise of getting my hands on some Indiana BBQ ribs (at both the Ram and Rock Bottom). Here's to next year!